Broken Gamebooks #23: Talisman of Death

Talisman of Death was only the eleventh book in the original Fighting Fantasy series, and one of the earliest (the second, in fact) to be sourced from an outside writer after it became apparent that the range's creators, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, could not possibly hope to write quickly enough to meet the huge public demand the books generated. The writers in question were Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith, who took the book outside of Allansia to set it on a fantasy world called Orb, which they would later use in their own gamebook series, The Way of the Tiger, effectively making Talisman a sort of pilot for that series (which came from a totally different publisher).

Thomson and Smith went on to write many more gamebooks -- apart from two other Fighting Fantasies, Thomson's credits range from two early-nineties offerings based on The Crystal Maze to co-authoring Can You Brexit?, an adventure casting the reader as the Prime Minister in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, whilst Smith's CV is shorter but he also collaborated with Thomson on the highly ambitious Duel Master series and the sci-fi Falcon books, aimed at a slightly older audience than most gamebooks -- and from playing Talisman, their very first foray into interactive fiction, it's not hard to see why. Talisman is a well-designed, well-written tome impressive in its scope and scale, with its authors coming up with several innovations new to the range at that point... which unfortunately leads to one of its most memorable errors!

Broken Gamebooks #22: Battleblade Warrior

And suddenly the roar of battle ceases, and the ranks of warriors part. Atop a mound of human bodies, right at the centre of the fighting, is the Lizard Man Champion. Nearly three metres tall, four-armed and splattered with gore, the immense creature is swinging a barbaric war-axe and a huge knife larger than your own sword. The Champion howls insanely, drunk with blood-lust, calling on any brave warrior to challenge him to a fight. Will you step forward to take him on (turn to 26), or take advantage of the distraction to break through the lines (turn to 213)?

So section 333 of Battleblade Warrior sets the scene for the only notable error in the thirty-first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, originally published in 1988... an error if, were it not for the fact that I find it quite funny, might not be covered here.

Broken Gamebooks #21: Dead of Night

Sometimes I regret the name given to this series of articles, because Dead of Night -- the 40th entry in the Fighting Fantasy series, written by Jim Bambra & Stephen Hand and published by Puffin in late 1989 -- isn't really broken, it's basically just got two small-ish logistical errors, one of which the player can easily exploit. It's also rightly considered one of the strongest and most memorable entries in the series, owing to its pervading sense of Gothic horror, high quality of writing, innovative additions to the basic gameplay system and having multiple possible ways to get the successful ending.

But you came here for the mistakes.

Broken Gamebooks #1 ½: Realm of Chaos Redux

Way back in the first ever Broken Gamebooks article, nearly five years ago now, the inaugural adventure gamebook under discussion was the sixth GrailQuest book, Realm of Chaos. I have some startling new revelations to share with you, which were provided by commentator Ed Jolley. (Ed has also left some thoroughly interesting notes on some of my other posts, which you would be well-advised to seek out.)

Broken Gamebooks #20: Sword of the Samurai

By pleasing coincidence (since I'd originally planned to cover something else entirely, but logistical issues -- namely, that the gamebook series I meant to write about turned out to have a set of reprints by a different publisher a few years later that fixed several of the problems found in the original versions, and it's going to take a while for me to track everything I need down -- mean we're getting this instead), Sword of the Samurai is both the twentieth entry in the original Fighting Fantasy series, and the twentieth entry in our ongoing series examining mistakes in adventure gamebooks. So what's the problem?

Broken Gamebooks #19: Return to Firetop Mountain

The 50th book in the Fighting Fantasy series, the centerpiece of the range's 10th anniversary celebrations, a sequel to the very first book in the series -- and originally intended to be the last book of all in the series, but the special attention given to the range for these various milestones caused sales to spike and it carried on in its original form for another three years.

But that is not all Return to Firetop Mountain is known for.

Broken Gamebooks #18: Clash of the Princes

A special release outside the main Fighting Fantasy range, Clash of the Princes (published 1986) was a two-book boxset (both written by Andrew Chapman and Martin Allen). Each book could function as a solo gamebook if you didn't have a friend to play with (let's rise above jokes about the likelihood of that, please), but if you did happen to have a friend to hand, then you could play the first - and, to date, only - two-player Fighting Fantasy adventure!

Broken Gamebooks #17: Voyage of Terror

We covered the fact that several of the later adventures in the GrailQuest suffered from major playability issues and a serious lack of proofreading in some of the very earliest Broken Gamebooks articles. But let's go back to the fourth book in the series now, to look at an interesting, albeit small, design flaw.

Broken Gamebooks #16: Knights of Doom

One of the last entries in the original Fighting Fantasy series, Knights of Doom can change hands for upwards for £60 these days (original RRP £3.99) - its author, Jonathan Green, has been one of the highest-profile components of the 21st century revival, but inexplicably neither Wizard nor Scholastic have reprinted this one yet.

And I'm only going to use my copy to tell you all about a silly proofreading error. Tragic, isn't it?

Broken Gamebooks #15: Vault of the Vampire

Bonus fact: At the request of the publisher, the illustrator "reluctantly" toned down the cleavage on the girl in the background.

Time to finish up on Keith Martin's adventure gamebooks, then. There are two things worth mentioning here, and the first is small, but interesting. Take a look at this picture of section 123, and its accompanying illustration:

Broken Gamebooks #14: Tower of Destruction

Brace yourself, because this may be one of the most buggy gamebooks ever - certainly of those released under the Fighting Fantasy banner, at any rate. There's a story to be told behind the writing of this one, I'm sure, although I doubt we'll ever get to hear it (it's another one written by the now sadly departed Keith Martin) - note that within what you are about to read I have not covered several notable typographical errors, including "fortunate" being used instead of "unfortunate", accidentally including the word "not" in what should have read "this is hard work", a Snow Fox turning into a Silver Fox, a case where Martin accidentally forgets one of the special rules only used in this book (to wit, hit a Demonic Servant twice in a row and it automatically dies, although the player can reasonably infer it anyway) and using the wrong attributes (such as Attack Strength instead of SKILL when there is an important distinction between the two).

Broken Gamebooks #13: Night Dragon

There are three mistakes worth noting here, and for some reason I find the biggest one really, really funny, which is mostly why it's getting covered.

Broken Gamebooks #12: Legend of Zagor

Pointless fact: The main part of the cover illustration was done by one artist, and the four portraits of the heroes by another.

There are three major things to cover here. I'll get the easy one out of the way first - if you have a Puffin edition of this book, then section 120 directs you to 233, when it should be 223. (An earlier version of this article had the latter two sections the wrong way round -- see comments for more) This particular error was fixed for the Wizard reprint in 2004.

Probabilities of Terror

The final boss of Crypt of the Sorcerer, the twenty-sixth book in the original Fighting Fantasy series and published in 1987, is the titular Sorcerer, Razaak. His combat statistics are SKILL 12 and STAMINA 20 - more or less the highest possible scores the player character can have. This is compounded by the fact that if Razaak wins two combat rounds in a row, you die automatically. Somebody actually did the maths on this thing and, provided you have the same or slightly higher statistics as Razaak when you fight him (i.e. you rolled the highest possible SKILL score, and near enough the highest possible STAMINA score, and are still at full health) then your chances of winning are 5.5%... which would obviously diminish the lower your scores are. This is an impossibly one-sided encounter.

Broken Gamebooks #11: Midnight Rogue

Midnight Rogue, the twenty-ninth entry in the Fighting Fantasy series, is an entertaining change from the norm: you play an apprentice in the Thieves' Guild of Port Blacksand, and to be granted full membership of the guild, you must locate and steal a priceless gem known as the Eye of the Basilisk. It's a fun, punchy adventure with a unique plot, and also tries a few gameplay innovations not often seen in FF books; nothing groundbreaking, but I'm certainly glad it exists.

Right, that's that out of the way, let's errata the hell out of this thing. MASSIVE SPOILERS below the jump break, for the wary.

House of Hellish Difficulty

1984's House of Hell, then. An early entry in the Fighting Fantasy series, penned by the range's co-creator Steve Jackson, the only book in the series to feature a contemporary setting (a title it would hold until 2012, when Ian Livingstone's Blood of the Zombies was unleashed upon the world), and surely responsible for many a nightmare given to unsuspecting young children who read it. It was also easily the hardest book in the series up to that point, and remains well-known for its high difficulty level.

Broken Gamebooks #10: Spellbreaker / Curse of the Mummy

 

Here're two curious ones, and no mistake. These two Fighting Fantasy books were both written by Jonathan Green, and both published by Puffin towards the end of the original series' life. They're also agreed to be two of the more challenging entries in the series, not least because of the large number of extremely difficult combats they both contain. Green is one of the few non-Jackson/Livingstone authors to have had his books reprinted by Wizard for the revived series, and these books were felt to be so difficult that a few changes were made to them in an attempt to make them easier, principally in reducing the stats for some of the enemies you face. However, in doing so, a few new errors are introduced!

Broken Gamebooks #9: The Crimson Tide

This is another famous Fighting Fantasy faux pas that no series called "Broken Gamebooks" would be complete without mentioning, and also an important lesson in proof-reading.

Broken Gamebooks #5 ½: Return to the Crown of Kings

Steve Jackson's Sorcery! has received a bit of an errata from the blog in the past. But here's something I missed out on the first time round, and I think is worthy of a post in its own right. (It would help to read the original article if you haven't already, naturally.)

Broken Gamebooks #8: The Lone Wolf Round-Up

Mydnight's Hero belongs to the Lone Wolf range's "New Order" subseries, where Lone Wolf had already saved the world and you now played one of his disciples in the re-established Kai Order. It also has mistakes in it, and they're two rather interesting mistakes, because - as with Steve Jackson's Sorcery! - they hint at some sort of revision to the text somewhere in the writing process. We'll cover most of the remaining issues with Lone Wolf that are worth talking about in this article, as promised way back in Broken Gamebooks #2, but we'll start with this one.